


i want wind to blow

by naveed



Category: Ackley Bridge (TV)
Genre: Late Night Conversations, M/M, emotional boys, things will be okay eventually
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-11
Updated: 2018-08-11
Packaged: 2019-06-25 19:55:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15647856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/naveed/pseuds/naveed
Summary: "sweep me off my feettake me up,don't bring me back"[ i want wind to blow - the microphones ]“It’s good though, right?” Naveed whispers. “What me and you have?”





	i want wind to blow

**Author's Note:**

> uh i wrote this before episode 10 so that's when it's set x

01:34: can you come over?

Cory lies on his bed staring at his ceiling. In the dark, mind, so he could be looking anywhere and it would all look the same. You know when it’s pitch black and you have no depth perception, or any awareness of your surroundings, and you can just wave your hands around and not feel anything? Like you’re blind and floating. Eventually you can’t even feel the bed you’re lying on, although you seem unable to move from it.

This is what Cory has felt like all day. Blind, floating, distanced from reality. He’s doing what he does normally, but his brain is on autopilot. It’s just muscle memory. He’s not putting any thought or feeling into anything at all. In fact, inviting Naveed over feels like the first conscious decision he’s made all day.

**01:47: yeah, of course**

He doesn’t even question it. Naveed sits up and coaxes himself awake, pulling on a decent pair of jeans to go out. He’s fairly sure Cory’s house is within walking distance. As quietly as he can, Naveed opens his door and sneaks downstairs, grabbing his shoes and jacket. He takes the overhead key from the door and makes his way out, softly shutting and locking the door, putting on his shoes on the doorstep. Then, he wraps his jacket around himself, and starts walking.

Cory doesn’t know how far away Naveed lives. So for the next fifteen minutes, he waits with his phone held in front of him, not that he can see it, until it lights up;

**02:04: should i knock?**  
02:04: no wait there

Cory, with the most energy he’s displayed in a long while, jumps out of his bed and hurries down the stairs. If his dad did wake up, he’ll just fall back asleep a few seconds later, and forget what ever disturbed him. He’s like that when he’s drunk.

Cory puts his shoes and jacket on in about twenty seconds. Unnervingly, the door is already unlocked.

“Nav,” he says, stepping out into the cool air. It’s refreshing, actually. It’s been too hot this week.

“Cory,” Naveed echoes. “Is everything okay?”

Cory doesn’t answer. With only a brief glance to Naveed, he shuts the door and starts walking. Naveed understands, and follows alongside him. It’s not as cold as you’d expect outside, contrary to the late hour. Cory realises how warm his room was, stifling him and his thick cotton trackies without him even noticing. Now, he prefers the cold.

Everything seems a little backwards. “I just wanted to get out,” he admits, still staring at his feet. The air is still and undisturbed. They’re halfway to the rec. “That house, it suffocates me sometimes. I just want to get out and forget about everything, all the shit things that keep happening.” He pauses, contemplative for a moment. “But I can’t.”

“Doesn’t stop us trying, though,” Naveed shrugs. Cory looks up at him. “Like, I’m sure it’s worked at some point. It’s just that moment when everything comes back – it makes it feel like you never forgot. I reckon it’s possible, though. Even for a second. That’s why we keep trying.”

Cory stops walking. “How do you do that?”

Naveed turns to him, totally blasé, as if he doesn’t even register what he’d just said. “Do what?”

“You always find good in things.”

Naveed laughs shyly. “I don’t know. It’s just how I’ve learnt to be, I guess. No point dwelling on the negatives.”

Cory smiles softly. The orange glow of the last streetlight makes Naveed’s face cast shadows on itself. It lights up his eyes. The field behind him looks hazy and cast in fog, even though it isn’t, and for a split second while staring at this boy, lit up like an ethereal being, Cory forgets.

“Yeah,” he sighs, walking up to the entrance of the park. “Yeah, I suppose you’re right.”

They end up sat right in the middle of the open field. Naveed, ever so courteous, takes off his jacket and lays it on the dewy grass. Cory flashes him a small smile. The pair sit down at the same time, side-by-side, and sigh heavily together. Naveed picks up on this and chuckles silently.

“Before you ask,” Cory starts, “I didn’t want to be alone. It sounds stupid, but… if I’d left on my own – well, I probably wouldn’t have even left – but I wouldn’t be able to block anything out. Like, I’d just be the same, stupid me, in a different place. So I invited you. Sorry it’s so late.”

Naveed looks over at him. Cory is staring straight ahead. “What made you think of me?”

Cory’s head falls between his knees. “Dunno,” he mumbles. “I can talk to you best, I suppose.” He glances in Naveed’s direction, still avoiding eye contact. “The others, I can have a laugh with them, and I love them, like, they’re not bad mates or owt. It’s just… I don’t see us ever properly like, talking about our emotions and that.”

“But you can with me?” Naveed prompts, slightly self-doubting.

Cory meets his eye. “Yeah, I can. And you get these things, see,” he gestures around with his hands, “you understand. You understand all these weird thoughts I tell you about and you come out with shit like, _no point dwelling on the negatives_. I couldn’t get that from Riz, you know. I love him but…” Cory considers this; “I don’t think we could do what you and I do.”

Naveed stays silent. There’s something in Cory’s words that leaves him genuinely unknowing how to reply. Increasingly nowadays, Naveed is seeing vulnerability in Cory he never would have imagined existed back when they first met. But it keeps cropping back up, in the spontaneous “deep chats” they have occasionally, or the odd, late-night text he’ll receive out of the blue. Even in the offhand comments Cory makes, like a brief mention of his brother not being home. It’s deeply troubled, but to him, that’s just his life now. And sometimes, it’s the lack of comment. While conversing about homework, or rugby, or a fit girl who was _totally_ just giving us the eye; Cory can be eerily quiet.

“It’s good though, right?” Naveed whispers. “What me and you have?”

God knows it’s weird for him too. It’s an unfortunate stereotype, but Naveed has grown up fairly sensitive. He’s in touch with his emotions, for the most part. Or maybe nothing has happened yet that’s traumatic enough to bring up feelings he really can’t cope with. To be fair, he’s fine with that. He feels safer. And even though he knows that eventually, secrets will come out, and his life will be forcefully flipped upside-down in life’s classically unpredictable manner… well, for now, he’s okay with blissful ignorance. Let’s not push it.

“Good?” Cory shifts but a millimetre closer. “It’s more than good, Naveed, it like, totally clears my head. I see things clearer.” They look straight at each other, self-doubt fading from Naveed’s eyes and Cory’s words sinking in. He searches his face. Deadly serious. Cory is so, so vulnerable.

“Are you not cold?”

“Huh?” Naveed looks down at his arms, as if he didn’t know what he was wearing. “Nah, I’m fine.”

“Come here,” Cory tuts, wrapping his hoodie-clad arm around Naveed’s shoulders.

“I’m fine, mate, I’m fine,” Naveed insists with a laugh, but Cory’s having none of it, pulling him in. Eventually he stops protesting (if you could call two half-arsed _no_ ’s a protest), and falls back against Cory’s torso. Cory opens his hoodie and attempts to pull it around Naveed’s sides. Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t fit around them both, so he wraps his arms around him and holds Naveed as tight as he can.

“You are freezing!”

“Am not,” Naveed shakes his head.

“You are,” Cory laughs, squeezing him. “You’d be getting frostbite if it weren’t for me right now.”

“Oh, my saviour!” Naveed swoons mockingly. Cory rocks him playfully onto his side. Naveed shifts his legs and pushes against Cory, trying to force him onto his back. It doesn’t work, so Cory tightens his arms around him and holds him in place, laughing all the while.

It warms them up. Not like the stifling warm of Cory’s bedroom, in the dusty house he’s grown to hate. It’s a soft warmness. A warmness that comes from deep inside both of them, and is only strong enough to feel now they’re together. It’s a warmness that he prefers to the cold he was craving before. It’s a warmness that makes him forget about everything else.

This moment, shared in an empty, half-lit patch of grass, seven minutes away from his house and twenty-three away from Naveed’s, is what makes Cory forget. And he couldn’t have got that on his own.


End file.
